


As Long As There's Breath In My Body

by kathkin



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark, Gen, Ringbearer!Merry AU, implied major character death in near future, major character death in back story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 21:07:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14679519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathkin/pseuds/kathkin
Summary: Sometimes it’s as if Merry is still under the mountain, in Moria – the place he dreads to name even in his thoughts. Those endless days in the darkness and the silence. It was like a nightmare. He wishes he could wake up.Merry is haunted by the past, in more ways than one. Merry chose to take the Ring to Minas Tirith. He chose wrong.





	As Long As There's Breath In My Body

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/tolkienfans/comments/88ceik/what_would_have_happened_if_frodo_died_in_moria/?utm_source=ifttt) on r/tolkienfans.

“I wish old Strider was here,” Pippin says. “I can’t help feeling he’d know what to do.”

Looking out east, Merry says nothing. Beyond the white walls of the city, dark mountains and a red glow. A shadow moving steadily towards them. He closes his eyes and for a moment he’s staring down a dark, dark tunnel.

Sometimes it’s as if he’s still under the mountain, in Moria – the place he dreads to name even in his thoughts. Those endless days in the darkness and the silence. It was like a nightmare. He wishes he could wake up.

He wants to say _don’t be stupid, Strider doesn’t know what to do, none of us know what to do. Can’t you see, can’t you see that everything’s coming apart_. He breathes deep. “I don’t know, Pip. I’m sure he’ll be back soon.”

Aragorn rode out two weeks ago. He took Legolas and Gimli with him in his party. There’s been no word since. He won’t say as much aloud – and certainly not to Pippin – but Merry has stopped expecting them back.

The spark of hope hasn’t gone from Pippin’s eyes yet and Merry has no intention of stamping it out. But he can’t bear to lie.

He says, “I can’t shake the feeling we should never have come here.”

Sam, sitting hunched on the stone floor, not daring to look out over the walls, says, “you think we should have turned east ‘stead of west.”

“I don’t know,” says Merry. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Do you think that’s what Frodo would have done?” says Pippin.

Merry’s blood turns to ice. “I don’t know. I don’t know what Frodo would have done.”

Spidery fingers crawl up his spine. The sick, prickling feeling of someone watching him. Someone on the balcony behind him, so close he can feel their breath on his skin, standing silently, watching, listening. He stands frozen, not daring to look.

He looks. The balcony is empty, as he’d known it would be. But the feeling doesn’t go away.

A sharp pain in his hand. Cold metal biting into his skin.

“Merry?” says Pippin. “Merry, don’t.”

Looking down Merry finds that he’s clutching it tight in his hand. He finds himself doing that more and more, squeezing tighter and tighter without even knowing that he’s holding it. Pippin tries to pry his fingers apart and he resists.

“Don’t do that,” he says, batting Pippin away. He puts it back beneath his shirt himself, out of sight but never out of mind. He doesn’t want Pippin seeing it, let alone touching it. He doesn’t want either of them to touch it, Pippin or Sam, and he won’t let it touch them.

Every day the shadow draws closer it gets heavy. Heavy, and always cold to the touch no matter how long it sits against his skin it’s burning cold. Was it so heavy for Frodo, and so cold? He doesn’t know.

“I was only trying to help,” says Pippin.

Footsteps ring out on the stone floor. Sam clambers to his feet, his face drawn and his body tense as if expecting an attack, even in this fortress of a city. Sam has been tense as a bowstring since the day under the mountain.

“Boromir,” he says.

Boromir’s face is bleak but seeing them all there he musters, if not a smile, a look of faint encouragement. “News has come from the north,” he says. “You are summoned.”

He leads them down through the citadel of Minas Tirith, down into the throne room. There, hunched in his seat like a twisted-up, dying, spider sits the steward – but Merry barely sees him.

“Gandalf,” he cries, a gasp of desperate relief. He breaks into a run.

They cluster around him like ducklings and in spite of everything Gandalf takes it in good humour. “Gandalf, you’re back,” says Pippin.

“You were gone so long,” says Sam.

“Yes,” says Gandalf. “Yes, I know.” Briefly, he runs a hand over Pippin’s hair. His smile does not reach his eyes.

When Gandalf had returned, clothed in white and glowing, Merry had for the first time since the mountain begun to hope. If Gandalf could come back, if such an evil could be overturned, maybe somehow everything could be made right again.

He remembers the look on Pippin’s face, seeing Gandalf again, innocent hope and yearning as if he expected Gandalf to produce Frodo like a rabbit out of a hat.

“What news?” says Pippin.

A hand resting on Pippin’s shoulder, Gandalf addresses the steward. “Ill tidings from the north,” he says. “Rohan has fallen to Isengard. Saruman’s forces are already turning south.”

“Ill tidings indeed,” says Boromir. “We will have no aid from the north, then?”

“There was never going to be aid from the north,” says Denethor.

“There may yet be,” says Gandalf. “Our hope lies now with Aragorn.”

“Ah yes, your fabled king, Mithrandir,” says Denethor. “Your king, who returned only to ride away again!”

“Aragorn has a task to perform,” says Gandalf.

“He has abandoned us,” says Denethor.

“He wouldn’t do that!” cries Pippin.

Gandalf shushes him. “He has a task to perform,” he says again. “A journey that will take him into perilous country. He may yet return, but I know not when.”

“Oh yes, this here task of his,” Sam bursts in. “You won’t even tell us what it is or nothing about it –”

“Quiet, Sam,” Merry hisses.

“No, I won’t be quiet!” says Sam. “Face it, there’s no hope left. There’s been no hope since Mister Frodo –”

His voice is growing high, fevered, and Boromir says his arm, meaning perhaps to lead him away but Sam roots his feet to the floor. 

“We didn’t know it then but that’s when it all fell apart,” he says. “It all fell apart right there.”

“Come away, Sam,” says Boromir.

“No, let him stay,” says Denethor. “He speaks wisely, perhaps. Mithrandir, were you not supposed to guard the ringbearer?”

Sam snatches his arm viciously from Boromir’s grip and wheels on Denethor, jabbing a furious finger at him. “It weren’t his fault! Don’t you go blaming him! You weren’t there, you didn’t see – none of us could stop it –”

“Be quiet, Sam,” says Gandalf. “Go with Boromir.”

“I’ll not be quiet!” says Sam. “And what have you done,” he says to Denethor, his voice echoing about the white chamber. “What have you done except sit there and glower at all of us and talk about doom and ill tidings and – and –”

Boromir grabs Sam under his arms and lifts him clean off the floor. Sam kicks, oh how he kicks. Sam hates being picked up and carried about by big people – _carried like a sack of potatoes_ , he’d once called it.

“Put me down,” he says as he kicks and squirms, held fast in Boromir’s grip. “Put me _down_ I’m not finished!”

He kicked and spat and clawed the air like an angry cat but he was helpless as he was carried away. The doors banged shut and his cries faded.

Gandalf passes a hand over his eyes. “The day grows long and I am weary,” he says. “There’ll be time to make plans in the morning.”

“What plans?” says Denethor. “Rohan is fallen. Gondor will be next.”

Pippin is looking at Denethor with big, wet eyes as if he can’t believe what he’s hearing. Gandalf touches his shoulder. “Pippin, go with Sam and Boromir,” he says. Pippin gives Gandalf a last look of fearful confusion, and he goes.

Merry makes to follow but Gandalf stops him. “With me, Merry.”

The White City is cold and the shadows grow longer every day. Cold, but peaceful. No peaceful, in its quiet places, that sometimes for a moment Merry can forget what’s coming. Gandalf takes him from the throne room into the twilight of a courtyard. A cold breezes rolls through the archway, scattering dead leaves.

“How bad was it?” says Merry. “In Rohan.”

“Let us not speak of it,” says Gandalf. “Not now.”

He’s smiling again, that strange, sad smile that doesn’t go to his eyes. Merry chokes back a sob. He collects himself. “You must tell me, if there’s no hope left,” he says. “Please, Gandalf. I just want to hear the truth.”

“As long as the walls of the White City stand there’s hope,” says Gandalf. “And Aragorn may yet return.”

Merry looks up at him, searches his face for any hint of deceit. He sees none, but he doesn’t doubt that Gandalf can lie like no-one else in the world when he wants to. Still, he’s willing to accept that Gandalf believes what he says.

“We should never have come here,” he says. “Should we? I chose wrong. We have gone east.” Saying it to Sam and Pippin is one thing. Admitting it before Gandalf is quite another. He chose wrong. He can see in Gandalf’s eyes that he’s right. He chose wrong.

“Meriadoc.” Gandalf sets a hand on his shoulders. “The choice should never have been yours to make,” he says gently. “This is not a burden you should ever have had to bear. Whatever part you were supposed to play, I feel in my heart it was not this.”

“Are you saying I shouldn’t have taken it?” Merry says.

“No – no,” says Gandalf, shaking his head. “You did what you thought was best. That’s all any of us can ever do.”

“Tell me the truth,” says Merry. “If you’d been there, would you have counselled me against it?”

“In truth,” says Gandalf. “I don’t know what counsel I would have given you. I do not know what counsel I would have given any of you.” He squeezes Merry’s shoulder. “You did a courageous thing.”

Merry sniffs. He wipes a hand across his face. “It wasn’t courage,” he says. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t _know_ , Gandalf.”

He’d been dazed, still numb with shock from what had befallen them. When he’d stepped forward, when he’d volunteered himself for this, he remembered thinking, _well, someone has to do it – might as well be me_.

“It’s so heavy, Gandalf,” he says. “It gets heavier every day. I can feel it wrenching at me. I feel like – like I’m being torn apart at the seams.”

The weight of it constantly threatening to pull him down, down under the earth. The constant pull east, as if he is at one end of a length of rope, pulled taut, the enemy and Mordor at the other.

And another, still more desperate pull to use it. To put it on, put it on and slip out of Minas Tirith and run until all this mess was behind him. Run, and find a hole in the ground to hide in and weather the storm. Run, and leave all his friends behind.

He couldn’t. He’d be caught at once. He’d be caught and all would be lost.

“I hope it wasn’t like this for Frodo,” he says. “I can’t stand the thought of him suffering like this.”

“Frodo didn’t suffer long,” says Gandalf.

Just like that Merry is under the mountain, seeing it all again. That hideous, blood-soaked day under the mountain when it had all begun to come apart. The darkness and the smell of decay, Sam’s howl of grief. The blinding sunshine of the mountainside, the blood dripping on the pale stone. 

In the courtyard the shadows lengthen and though he cries not to be starts to cry, filthy, wretched tears like he’s wanted to cry for weeks. He sobs, and he sobs, his vision swimming, blind with tears. An arm around his shoulders, coaxing him in. He buries his face in Gandalf’s white robes and gasps for breath.

“I can feel his eyes on me,” he chokes out. “All the time.”

He can feel it now, in the courtyard. Eyes, watching him, chilling his blood and burning into the back of his head.

Gandalf’s tone is at once urgent. “You mean – the enemy?”

“No,” says Merry. “Well – yes.” He breathes, deep and shaky. “Not him. Frodo.”

Gandalf days nothing but something changes behind his eyes, something Merry can’t quite identify.

“I can feel him watching me,” he says. “All the time. I can feel his eyes. Sometimes I think I hear his voice – I hear him calling to me.” Looking up at Gandalf he says, “please – Gandalf – tell me it isn’t possible. Tell me I’m losing my mind.”

Gandalf’s grip on him tightens. “Many things are possible,” he says.

Merry sucks in a breath of sheer horror. He doesn’t think Gandalf knows any better than him, what it is he’s feeling, what’s happening to him. He asked for the truth and it is given to him.

“What scares me more than anything is that even if I die it mightn’t let me rest,” he says. “We buried him in Lorien but he’s not resting – he’s here, he’s still here –”

“Merry,” says Gandalf, squeezing his shoulder, meaning perhaps to comfort or perhaps to quiet but now Merry’s started he can’t stop.

“I can’t rest,” he says. “I can sleep but I dream such awful dreams and I wake up feeling like I haven’t slept at all.” He wipes a hand across his nose and raises his head. “Take it away from me. Please, _please_ take it away so I can rest. You’re the only person I could give it to –”

He’d never thought of the arrangement as permanent – he’d carry it, as Frodo had, as far as Minas Tirith and then they’d see. He’d planned to give it to someone else, someone who could take care of it properly, keep it safe.

He knows they want it. He’s seen the way Denethor looks at him, hungrily, greedily. He’s started to see that look in Boromir’s eyes as well. They could turn the tide, if they had it. But as long as Gandalf is there they won’t take it by force.

But the thought of parting with it terrifies him and he doesn’t know why.

Cold metal cuts into his palm. Tears fog his eyes as he finds himself clutching at it and try as he might he can’t will his fingers to unclench.

Gandalf takes his hand softly, unwinds his fingers. They come away clammy and stiff. He wonders how long he has been holding it. Maybe since he left the throne room. Taking it by its chain, Gandalf puts it back in its proper place, out of sight.

“I’d take it from you in a heartbeat, if I could,” Gandalf says, so, so gently. It doesn’t help. Merry already knew as much.

“I miss him so much, Gandalf,” he says. “I never thought I’d be without him. Not ever.”

“I miss him too,” says Gandalf.

They stand there in that silent, still courtyard. The wind has died and the shadows Merry feels are less deep. Gandalf’s hand stays upon his shoulder, perhaps as much for his own reassurance as Merry’s.

“Will Aragorn come back?” says Merry.

“I know not,” says Gandalf.

“What would you have me do?” says Merry.

“I can’t tell you what to do,” says Gandalf. “Only – do not give it away. Not to anyone. Do you understand?”

“I couldn’t if I wanted to,” says Merry. “But what if he doesn’t come back?”

“Then we’ll see,” says Gandalf.

“You said yourself he’s our last hope,” says Merry. “It’s over. Isn’t it? It’s just a matter of time.” His hand strays again towards the chain about his neck and he forces it back down. “I should never have brought it here.”

“Merry.” Gandalf’s hand touches his face, tilting it upwards. “Meriadoc. Whatever happens now, know that you aren’t to blame. The seeds of this evil were sown long before you were born.”

“It feels like I’m to blame,” says Merry.

“Well, you aren’t,” says Gandalf. “You are not to blame. Now, try to sleep.” Gandalf’s hand runs over his hair. “We’ll talk again in the morning.”

There won’t be a morning. There haven’t been mornings in – Merry doesn’t know how many days. He had not realised the day was almost over. The twilight never ends. He doesn’t want to sleep but he will do as Gandalf asks.

In the halls of the citadel he raises his head and there, stepping into view like a shadow, Boromir. “What did he tell you?” he asks.

“Nothing I didn’t already know,” says Merry. “How’s Sam?”

“He tired himself out,” says Boromir. “Poor boy.”

“He usually does,” says Merry.

Boromir steps closer and as he looms Merry is aware, as he is more and more, of how tall Boromir is, how broad. There’s a hungry look in his eye, like a lean, starving wolf. Merry wants badly to touch it, to curl his hand around it protectively. He fights the urge, clutching at his cloak to keep his hands safe by his sides.

“He is wrong,” says Boromir. “It isn’t hopeless. It never has been.”

“I’m tired,” says Merry.

“This is madness, this waiting,” says Boromir. “You must see that.”

Merry says nothing.

“I understand, why you would not give it to my father,” says Boromir. “Perhaps it is treason to say so, but I would not give it to him myself. Not now. But we could put a stop to this – you and I.”

Merry sees it. The same vision he sees sometime sin his dreams, beautiful, golden dreams he wishes he did not have to wake from. They could be safe, all of them. No-one else would have to die. Sam – Pippin – all of them, safe.

Its power, he tells himself, could not ever bring him what he wants, the one thing he truly wants. He knows this.

“If you want it, you’ll have to take it by force,” he says.

Boromir’s hand stretches out towards him and for a moment Merry thinks he’s going to do it. For a moment he almost welcomes it. He will fight – of course he will – but in the end Boromir will win, and it will be over, it will be out of his hands.

But the hand, faltering, touches his shoulder. “You’re exhausted,” says Boromir. “Forgive me. I should not have spoken to you so.”

There was a time, Merry knows, when he and Boromir were friends. But now that hunger is in Boromir’s eyes all the time and whether this is true kindness or merely an act, another attempt to bring him around to Boromir’s way of thinking, Merry doesn’t know. It’s both, he thinks. It’s both.

He steps away, letting Boromir’s hand slip from his shoulder. “Good-night, Boromir,” he says.

At the twist in the passage he turns. Boromir is watching him leave and for a moment their eyes meet and Merry thinks: _it’s only a matter of time, now_.

*

He doesn’t sleep.

He sits on the floor beside his bed. He’s never liked sleeping in this place, this high place, even before the dreams started. He sits beside his bed, holding it in his hand, until around him the citadel falls into the deathly silence of true night. Then he stumbles to his feet, and goes.

In the darkness outside his chamber, he breathes for a moment. He can still go back, back to waiting for the ending.

The back of his neck prickles and he is not alone, he is certain of it, he is not alone. Standing in the dark he is gripped by cold terror. Eyes, watching him from the shadows. The faintest murmur of a voice.

Summoning his courage, he says, “I know you’re there.”

Whatever it is, as quickly as it came, it is gone. He breathes. He walks on.

When he goes to knock on the door, it opens. Sam is waiting for him.

“Sam,” he says, but he doesn’t finish.

“I’ve packed some things for you,” says Sam, handing him the pack he’d carried from Rivendell. “Only what you’ll need most, and some food and water.”

Sam always did have a way of seeing and hearing more than he’d let on.

“Thank you,” says Merry, grateful, truly grateful, moreso than anything at not having to explain himself. “Say good-bye to Pippin for me.”

“I will, sir.”

“He won’t understand,” says Merry. “He’ll want to come with me.” His voice begins to shake. He sucks in a breath, trying to control himself. “Look after him – you know the trouble he gets into.”

“I will,” says Sam. “I’d come with you. If you asked me.”

“I can’t ask that of you,” says Merry. He can’t ask it of anyone.

“I know,” says Sam. “But I wanted you to know.”

“I don’t think it’s safe here any more,” says Merry. 

“I don’t suppose it is,” says Sam.

He’s seen it too – and so has Gandalf. The inexorable danger, breeding within the citadel. He didn’t know. He didn’t understand, what would happen, what harm it would do here. Not until it was too late.

He says, “I have to finish this.

Sam lays a hand on his shoulder. “Lay him to rest, sir.”

Sam sees more than he lets on, indeed. Merry can’t help himself. He throws his arms round Sam and embraces him, holding on tight the way he wants to hold onto Pippin, to Gandalf, to the whole city. “Good luck, Sam,” he manages.

“Good luck to you too, sir,” says Sam. “I dare say you’ll need it.”

In the darkness of the citadel, it’s cold – always so cold, in his hand. Merry feels the weight of it in his palm, runs the tip of his thumb around the golden rim. He thinks: _here’s no going back from this one_.

For the first time, he means to wear it.

*

The sky overhead is dark. The shape moving against it is darker still, a shadow against the night.

Gazing upwards, Merry thinks, _well, it always was a long shot._

In the night sky, a long, shrill cry, a howl of warning – or of victory – he can’t say, because he can’t think. Sheer terror grips him, terror as he’s never felt before. He’s blind with fear, blind and mute and thoughtless. He can’t run, can’t do anything but stand rooted to the earth and listen to that scream above him.

It ends. He can think. He has three choices: to run on east; to run back the way he came; or to stand his ground.

Down, down it flies, lower and lower, like a great, reeking bat. It is fearful but its rider is worse. It settles on the earth before him and for a moment he can’t breathe for the icy wind in his face.

He’s faced this thing before. Merry didn’t understand, then, what it was, but he knows him now. He wants to say so, wants to call out _I know who you are_ , wants to lie bravely and say _I’m not afraid of you_ but he can’t find any words at all.

Merry thinks: _as long as the walls of the White City stand, there is hope_. He thinks: _as long as there is breath in my body, I will not stop fighting_.

He doesn’t speak. He draws his sword and holds it steady in his hand and as he does so, he feels it again, that presence at his back, those eyes watching him. It doesn’t scare him. It’s like a hand on his shoulder and at that thought his fears ease.

It’s like a comforting hand on his shoulder, a steadfast reminder that wherever he goes next, he will not be going alone.

Merry raises up his barrow-sword and readies himself for a fight.


End file.
